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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

I try not to run at night because I don't like running when it's dark. Yes, it's cooler, but I trust exactly two drivers on the island completely, and I'm the other one. I run on the sidewalk, but I still want to pretend that the cars are seeing me. So I run in the day time. That way right before they hit me they say, "Holy crap!" *thud*
Yesterday, I went straight from school to a union meeting because I'm a big mouth and I demand to be heard. Our governor continues to screw with teachers and I wanted to be in on the discussion about negotiations and next steps. What that meant is I didn't get home until the sun was setting.
I'm right in the middle of getting myself back into a workout rhythm, and I can't let something like a long day get in the way of that. It would have been so very easy to collapse onto the couch and feel like that was alright. But I fought through it, changed, and got out the door. I have to act fast like that or I will fail. It's all about making the transition as quickly as possible before I have time to think about it.
The run went ok. I'm starting to slowly feel better out on the road again. My right foot is a little sore today, but that's to be expected. At least the knee doesn't bother me. I don't run down either of the steep downhills on my route because that makes it hurt, but the uphills are ok. I'm slow, but I'm out there. And having just left a union meeting gave me something to think about the entire run. It also gave me something to talk out loud to myself about like I was arguing with imaginary legislators. I'm sure none of the people I ran by noticed though. I mean, long haired guy in a bright yellow shirt grumbling to himself in toe shoes? Easy to miss.
Swam Tuesday too. Didn't write about it because it was nothing to write home about. Drill-focused, trying to get my stability and strength back.
Super Awesome Wife and Dirtbag Baby finally come home late tomorrow night! Very excited.

Monday, January 28, 2013

I have a new active.com article up wherein I solve the doping in sports problem forever. That's right, stop the debates, stop the hearings, stop the presses, stop the pretending to be outraged for I have fixed it.The Solution to Doping in Sports

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Today before I left the house to meet the Grey and Diesel for the weekend's ride I looked outside. This is what it looked like:

Oh..so we are going to get rained on then. Right. Weather reports said watch for flash floods but that wasn't supposed to start until later in the day. Bloody weather. We decided to not ride down to the North Shore and back because getting caught that far from home in a storm would be the suck. Instead it was laps around Wheeler Air Field and Schofield Army Base. It rained, drizzled, and poured pretty much the whole time. It was still fun. Mostly because none of the three of us are grown-ups. Conversations went very simply.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Super Awesome Wife and Dirtbag Baby are on the mainland right now visiting her family. I'm still on island because we decided I should save sick days for Mommy/Baby Needs Daddy days. So I'm home alone. On my run today I got to thinking about what I would say to a person if they asked me why they should get fit. I think it's a good question, what would you say? Do you have real reasons for being fit? I spent the run thinking about that and came home and wrote it out. Then I decided that instead of just posting words, like normal, I'd play around with the camera built into the computer and make it into a simple video. For fun. Because this should be fun. So below is the video and below that is the text from the video. Thanks for playing along!

Fit to BeFit is variable.Fit is mental. Fit is an idea.Fit to be...Fit to be healthy.Fit to be dedicated to a goal. Fit to be balanced. To expend negative energy in positive ways.Fit to have a reason not to sit on the couch after sitting at work.Fit to be a parent who’s kids grow up with fitness.Fit to learn limits. Fit to learn to surpass limits. Fit to accomplish something every day.Fit to be sexy? No. Sexy is an external value placed on you by others. Fit is not always sexy.Fit to be self confident then. Self confidence is always sexy. Fit builds self confidence.Fit to conquer and subdue ego. Fit to build a healthier ego.Fit to be accepting weakness in yourself and others. Fit to know weakness is not a permanent state.Fit
to be happy. To quote a guilty pleasure, “Exercise gives you
endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot
their husbands, they just don't.” Fit to eat the occasional pint of ice cream after a long day.Fit to be better at suffering. Fit to understand pain passes eventually, but not always easily.Fit to be in control of something in your life. Fit to have something to hold to. Fit
to be better than you were the day before and understanding sometimes
that just isn’t possible. Fit means going again anyway. Fit to be free.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Morning workouts were old hat for a long time. But stopping getting up at 5am is the easiest habit to break in the world. And getting back into that habit can be brutal when the other option is staying in bed with a tiny human and a wife. (Yeah, we are co-sleeping hippies. And yeah, we are super careful and light sleepers.) Not hitting snooze and rolling over is a matter of guilting myself into getting up. Thinking thoughts like, "Don't be full of weak sauce. You used to do this all the time. Just get up." And the kicker, "You know you're going to be pissed at yourself if you don't." Which is true. I'm always hard on myself when I miss a workout. Trying to be extra hard on myself now because I'm in the midst of getting back into the groove and I need to set the routine back up.
My other big problem with morning workouts is I'm not planning ahead like I used to. Part of packing my bag the night before was always grabbing some paper and writing my workout for the morning down, keeping in mind goals and objectives for the workout and the training cycle as a whole. I haven't done that since my last Honu training swim. This is a terrible habit to be in. It is so much easier to bail on a set when it isn't in black and white in front of me. Before my next swim I need to write down a workout rather than plan it on my way down the hill to my truck.
I'm still not fit so I'm not swimming on time standards yet. I don't feel like I can be pumping like would make me happy so I'm moving my body, getting back into the feel, getting my stroke back instead. It's amazing how fast the stroke goes away. I can feel the wiggles, the looseness, the lack of power and grab. I have to keep telling myself it will come back. It takes patience and regularity.
It also means staying focused in the water. Sometimes the mind will wander, and when it does sometimes I talk to myself. This isn't so bad on the bike, is slightly more troublesome on a run, and can be quite an issue on a swim. I'm not really sure what I was talking about, sometimes my Ego thinks it will be invited to an active.com panel at some conference (neither of these things exist as far as I know), and I will be able to talk and talk and talk to a rapt audience. My Ego is that kind of guy. My Ego is used to being a teacher. I make no excuses. I started a blog for no one but myself, so imagining myself talking to an imaginary audience is not really that big of a leap. I'm also giving a talk at a national teachers conference in Vegas this summer so I'm thinking a lot about talking in front of groups. Anyway, what were we talking about?
Oh yeah, Manti Te'o is a big fat liar liar pants on fire. If you believe his story that he was totally fooled for four years then you believe he is the dumbest person on the planet. Naive doesn't even begin to cover it. He was in on it, he was in on it the whole time. Otherwise he would have come angrily clean the moment he found out he'd been duped. Wouldn't you have been so very pissed? What, we are supposed to believe that the people tricking him were so involved that they stayed on the phone with Te'o for hours at a time listening to each other breathe? We are supposed to believe he never once asked to Skype with his girlfriend? That he didn't go to her funeral because she said she wanted him to play football instead? That he never ever tried to visit her when he came to Hawaii, a state so small there is a race that started by three guys riding their bikes around it? He's been in on it the whole time. He continued to lie after he claims he found out it was a hoax. I don't know why he lied, but he is so full of it. I don't even know why it's important, other that FOOTBALL PLAYER FAKE DEAD GIRLFRIEND HOAX is the best combination of English words I've ever seen on a newspaper.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

I haven't been out on the bike since Dirtbag Fetus became Dirtbag Baby. It feels like a much bigger time commitment than going for a run or a swim and I haven't wanted to be away for that long. But The Grey knows I'm turning into a lazy couch-dweller and sent me a text Sunday night telling me he was kidnapping me for a bike ride Monday, it being a day off and all. I asked Dirtbag Baby what he thought and he agreed that I was getting depressing. I warned the Grey that I was out of shape and lame and he promised a short ride. It helped that he'd paced someone for a 20 mile loop on the HURT 100 the day before. Well, helped me.
We got out and went down Pineapple and back. Since I moved that added a couple of miles to that particular route and it was great to get out. It was freaking cold (for Hawaii) that early in the morning and I thought I was totally over the head cold I'd been dealing with since Wednesday. Turns out not so much as there was a ton of stuff in my forehead that felt like it was freezing as the wind whistled by while we shot down the hill. Yeah, I know the temperature was probably more like 65* and anyone who reads this who doesn't live in Hawaii thinks I'm being a big giant wussy wuss in my tight pants and arm sleeves and to those people I say...nyah nyah nyahnyah nyaaaaah I think it's cold when it's 65*, you have to ride when it's 10*! (By the way, my stats claim I have three readers in Ukraine, and five in Malaysia. And 91 in Russia! So hello to all the computers that for some reason bounce their signal off my blog for probably some illicit reason or possible legit readers in other countries! Seriously, if you aren't in the US and you're reading this drop a comment in the box. That would be cool.)
I figured Pineapple would suck seeing as I have no bike fitness right now, but it really wasn't that bad. I wasn't racing up the hill, I was probably riding just as fast as I could have up the hill, but it didn't suck as bad as I thought. Having ridden Pineapple so many times at this point probably helps. I know the hill and where I am on it and mentally that is a huge booster. The Grey being there pushing and talking helps too.
I'm slowly getting back into a semi-regular fitness routine and that's good. I need it. Baby needs to be around it. I will figure this fit dad thing out.

Friday, January 18, 2013

The swim this week (god, that sentence is depressing) was ok. It wasn't fast and it wasn't challenging, I didn't do much pushing, but it got did. Right now that is important. I'm still in the midst of finding the balance of working out and coming home after work to be dad. Dad is, obviously, more important. But fitness keeps me sane. Even after one mediocre morning swim I feel better.
And then the next day I get sick. Started feeling it Wednesday evening and by Thursday I was in it with stuffy nose, head cold, sore throat, tight neck muscles (whenever my traps get sore I know I'm getting sick, for some reason I carry it there). The whole shebang. Which kind of killed follow-up workout plans for the next few days. Better to be healthy, especially now since Sick Dad doesn't get to snuggle with Baby Dirtbag nearly enough. Can't be getting the tiny human sick.
Also, I did the Magic Island Biathlon last weekend. I need to write a race report, probably will in the next few days. Don't let me forget.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Yesterday I woke up a little early, told Super Awesome Wife that I needed to get a swim in, and grabbed a light breakfast so I'd have some energy in the water. Baby was still asleep and she was too for the most part. I told her that I'd stick around if she needed me to but no, it's ok. Then Roland woke up to eat. After he ate he decided that not only was he not hungry anymore, it was also time for The Fussy Baby Show. Super Awesome Wife hadn't gotten a ton of sleep the night before and was pretty knocked out. So instead of riding up to the gym and getting my swim on and stayed home hanging out with baby in my swim gear so that mom could get some rest and I could get some baby time.
No complaints, I signed up for this and holding a sleeping child is pretty awesome. Screaming child not so much but he settled down pretty fast.
That's been the case a lot this week. I mean to workout but then something child-related comes up. I'm still figuring out the balance. I'm also now at the bottom of Bad Habit Valley officially, and I need to climb out. Bad Habit Valley is where you realize just how much easier it is to sit on your ass eating tortilla chips and watching tv than it is getting out of the house for a workout. From the bottom of Bad Habit Valley a thirty minute run suddenly seems like a HUGE time commitment. Not working out is such an easy thing to slip into, and I'm so there. It's strange. One part of my brain is going "RUN! SWIM! RIDE! YOU WUSS!" and another is very, "...meh."
And sometimes, like yesterday, the workout side wins and loses anyway.
The biathlon I have coming up should be an interesting journey in lack of fitness, pain, and Adjusted Dad Expectations.

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